


He Knocked a Hundred Years at Your Door

by ineedsomecyanide



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Sad, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 09:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19129525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineedsomecyanide/pseuds/ineedsomecyanide
Summary: Valjean mourns an old adversary.





	He Knocked a Hundred Years at Your Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoceus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoceus/gifts).



> Happy birthday Jules and happy June 7th! (More or less...)  
> This work is unbeta'd, so all the mistakes are mine.

> They say then that while you were returning  
>  you slipped into the river, who knows how?  
>  And he, not wanting to believe you dead,  
>  knocked a hundred years more at your door.

“He’s a suicide. His funeral won’t be held in a church, but I know they’ll bury him on Tuesday. If you want to go, Monsieur… I didn’t know he had friends, or family… I can’t help you anymore.”  
The Inspector’s landlady answered with these words the pressing questions of the upset white haired man that had turned up at her door.

As soon as he had read about the Inspector’s death on the Moniteur, he had rushed to the police station on Place du Châtelet, heedless by now of all the charges that could have been pressed against him.  
Javert was dead, drowned in the Seine, and no one could recognize him anymore. A multitude of thoughts, conflicting feelings and sensations, dulled his mind. His hunter from time immemorial was dead, gone, vanished, and he should have been happy, and ran across the boulevards scaring the pigeons that, careless to human woes, cooed meekly on the sidewalks. But Valjean did not hold grudges against that man; maybe he he had hated him in a time that now felt distant, in prison, but men are beasts in jail, not men, and then he also hated the seabirds that soared free in the sky while they were toiling under the sun, chained to their sins, let alone hating a guard.  
Later, he ran from him only to save himself, to save Cosette. If it wasn’t for Cosette, would he have stopped? Would he have submitted to his captor’s claws? Would he have listened that dark self-destructive call that sometimes whispered to him to let go? At times he would ask himself if there wasn’t something more than that cold and looming obsession. But he would not dare to go often to those darker corners of his mind, where fear and desire mingled. He did not dare to assign such thoughts to Javert too.

He understood that Javert was just doing his duty, and in Montreuil-sur-Mer he always admired him for the way he was loyal to his office, always stony, always incorruptible. Because of this, he had saved him at the barricades, he did not want revenge, e he could not stand the death of an innocent. He was as innocent as the boys who died beyond the barricade, Marius’ friends. And he, he had thrown away his newly returned life. Suicide was not among the possibilities that Valjean had set for himself, and he did not think it was in the Inspector. He was wrong.  
When he had heard the news of Javert’s death, the less appropriate thing in that situation happened to him: he had cried. The only constant in his life for almost twenty years was gone into the murky waters of the Seine, and this created a maelstrom of emotions in Valjean’s chest.  
At the police station he had asked the Inspector’s address in a state of numbness, as if he had been outside his own body, with mechanical gestures, and after he could not remember anything that had happened at the station, if not a vague address in rue de Carmes. Javert’s landlady had opened the door of the numer 5 in that steep alley, and she had shared with him the few information she knew about the Inspector’s burial.  
“Do you want to come up, Monsieur? Do you want to take something to remember Monsieur l’Inspecteur? He didn’t have much, and tomorrow I’ll sell his few belongings…”

It was for mere curiosity that he accepted to go up the creaky staircase to the Inspector’s apartment, two small contiguous rooms, poor and tidy in a bewildering way. He was welcomed by a desk with paperwork and reports in a corner, an inkwell, a quill and blotting paper, a small bookcase with a few law and astronomy books, the Code Napoléon, and the Bible. Standing in the doorframe, he could see a narrow bed, with a thin mattress and a woollen blanket, a basin and a small jutting mirror. Valjean hoped that there was a stove.  
The stove was there, although it did not bear the signs of a frequent use, and a snuff box and old jet rosary, worn from too much use, were lined up on the windowsill. Jean Valjean let it run between his fingers, remembering its weight, remembering a mayor and an inspector, with a wall of lies between them, remembering how he had placed the rosary (“It’s flawed, Inspector, there are too many beads, we cannot sell it”) on the Inspector’s gloved hand, he remembered the hopeful gratitude in Javert’s eyes, and felt tears well in his eyes again. He furtively slipped the rosary in his waistcoat pocket.  
“It’s odd, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here, did you know the Inspector well?”  
“He was the only one who knew me, but I didn’t know him. Thank you, Madame, I’ll come on Tuesday. Have a good day” and he was gone, before the woman could ask him about his cryptic words.

*

The Inspector’s body – wrapped in a sheet – was tossed in a pauper grave outside the sacred soil of a graveyard near the Seine, with the presence of the undertaker and of a white-haired man crying profusely. A handful of lime, some shoveful of dirt, and nobody would remember that man, anymore, that man who died in the most tragic and miserable way, who had always stuck to his principles.  
Valjean crossed himself and said a silent prayer.  
In the last few days, he frequented the church even more assiduously then before, to pray per the Inspector’s soul, reciting the Mysteries with the Inspector’s rosary in his hands. He knew that suicide was an act against God, but in his heart he hoped that a place in Purgatory would be granted for his old enemy (but was he ever an enemy?).  
His nights were haunted by visions of a dripping wet Javert, who reminded him his sins and his inevitable death from his blue lips, like a an infernal messenger; by visions of Javert turned into a bare and withered tree, after he brushed up Dante again, looking for comfort or maybe to increase his grief for one of the lives he couldn’t save.  
Some nights Javert came to him in the guise of a hunter, and Valjean woke up drenched in sweat and only after some seconds he remembered that Javert would never chase him again, if not in his nightmares.  
He was starting to forget the Inspector’s face, his voice. In his dreams, the faces of everyone he had left behind, those who he could not save, blended together, and he woke up more and more often screaming, terrified by his nieces and nephews (he did not even remember their names), Jeanne, Fantine and Javert’s sunken and crying faces. Everyone pointed their pale and skeletal fingers to him, it was his fault, it was all his fault, if now they were dead and languished in Hell. His generosity was nothing but guilt-ridden, for as many people he could save, he would never bring them back. You’re a selfish, undeserving, evil man, a thief, a liar, their mournful voices said. Soon we will come for you, and then you’ll pay.  
Sometimes those terrible nightmares blended with other dreams, which he had in Toulon, and then even in Montreuil-sur-Mer, when Javert’s gaze was so heavy and piercing that Jean (24601, Jean-le-cric, père Madeleine) woke up sweaty, and soon embarassment took the place of bewilderment, when he looked down, at his legs, or at the bedsheets tangled in them, in Montreuil.  
He knew he was not like the others, since when he was a boy he always blushed more for his friends than for girls, but he had accepted it, he did not care. In his eternal guilt, no one, man or woman, could love him. Only Cosette cared for him, but she was unaware of his past.

Cosette’s wedding happened in a blur, and Jean Valjean found himself more and more often thrown in the pit of despair, and he cried without reserve, scared and alone, without his daughter’s smiles to warm his heart and remind him that a brighter world and brighter feelings were possible. Without Cosette, he only wished for death.  
And death came, and it was even better that Valjean had imagined, because Cosette showed up at his door, with Marius, and she had forgiven him and she was crying, and her husband was profusely apologizing for his behaviour, for the barricades, but all of this did not matter. Cosette was there, she still loved him and she was asking him not to die. But how can I, my child, if this is what I want the most? I’ll obey, I will try.  
Cosette, Marius, Fantine made of light, the bishop were there, and even Javert’s dark shadow was there, in a corner, doomed to his eternal hell of dripping water and blue lips. Everything was fine, he could not wish for a better death.  
Warm tears on his cheeks and Cosette’s hands between his were the last things he felt before his soul left his body and was welcomed by the bishop, before Cosette threw herself in Marius’ arms, sobbing inconsolably.

*

_(Valjean grabbed Javert’s arm, who was staying back from the other souls, looking almost ashamed, and spoke with a joy he could not believe he could feel anymore._  
_“I’m so glad you came. I cried for you.”_  
_“I know, I saw it”.  
_ _“Come, I’ll show you the light”.)_

**Author's Note:**

> The title was translated from Fabrizio De André's song,["La canzone di Marinella"](http://deandretranslated.blogspot.com/2014/02/volume-iii-canzone-di-marinella.html); like this fic, it was translated from Italian, so if any phrase sounds wonky, this is the reason. This fic was in my drafts for so long, and I can't thank the Sewerchat enough for making me finally post it.  
> This fic was inspired by [a poem by Giuseppe Ungaretti](http://fra-cherry.blogspot.com/2014/09/in-memoria-di-giuseppe-ungaretti.html) and salt for the ending of the 1998 Les Mis film.


End file.
